Between Radical and Realistic: Biodiversity, Transformation and Development Cooperation

Sammanfattning

Working Paper, April 2022 This working paper is one of the contributions to the forthcoming anthology. The text builds not only on the expertise of its author, Tilman Hertz from Stockholm Resilience Centre, but also on a roundtable discussion with leading international experts convened by EBA. Tilman Hertz first provides a background to one of today’s most important global challenges – the rapid loss of biodiversity. He goes on to discuss the role of development actors in general and donors, such as Sida, in particular. He formulates three questions, focusing on the potential role of development actors in supporting or fostering the transformation needed to reach not only biodiversity objectives but the SDGs in general. The main conclusions from the roundtable discussion delving into these questions are presented in the second part of this working paper. The author describes the significant body of work developed by IPBES and other actors, and both the background section and the roundtable summary provide a discussion on some of the more important choices that faces Sweden as a donor. EBA hopes that this working paper will provide helpful insights in the work to develop an overarching theory of change on how to support the protection of biodiversity. EBA working papers are shorter studies that investigate a question of limited scope or that complements a regular EBA study. Working papers are not subject to a formal decision from the expert group but instead reviewed by the secretariat before publication. The authors are, as with other EBA publications, responsible for the content of the report and its conclusions.